Adam: "Well, Daddy's is nice, but yours is best. Your's is squishier."

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Cookie time

Do you like cookies?Chocolate chip cookies?I do. I guess if I had to pick a favorite, they would be it (with lemon bars running a close second).

The first time I ever made chocolate chip cookies I was shocked to see that there was salt in the recipe.I mean, salt is for scrambled eggs and soup, not cookies.

But you all know how wrong I was.

Later in life I was introduced by my Hawaiian roommate to her version of hot chocolate.You put a slice of butter in it. Gross? No… not gross.

The sweet, the salty; amazing.

Now I don’t know much about cooking, I leave that to Guy, and as far as metaphors go I have often heard the one about needing the bitter to appreciate the sweet, but that is not what I am talking about here.It’s not about opposites or contrasts, but emphasis and enhancement.

It is the salt with the sweet that helps the sweetness to be realized in its full form, flavor, and dimension.Without it, sweet would, indeed, still be sweet, but somehow unfulfilled and less fullfilling.Perhaps a little flat, it’s lovely variations and subtleties less… alive.

For the next little while, I may be needing to talk about salt a lot more as I talk of sweet.But theybelong, no -- are-- together in my experience; I cannot separate them.